LARRY GIBSON

Shapiro Sher

Larry S. Gibson serves as of counsel at Shapiro Sher, concentrating his practice in litigation and administrative law, with bar admissions in Maryland and before the United States Supreme Court.

Gibson has been teaching law since 1972. As a professor at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, he taught Evidence, Civil Procedure, Racial Discrimination and the Law and Election Law for decades. He has also held teaching positions at the University of Virginia, the University of Mississippi and the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, where he served as a visiting professor in 1996.

In 2012, he published “Young Thurgood: The Making of a Supreme Court Justice” by Prometheus Books, a biography examining Thurgood Marshall’s education and early legal career. Taylor Branch praised the work as “a triumph of discovery and restraint,” while Kirkus Reviews called it “a well-researched and engaging biography and a fine addition to Marshall scholarship.”

An experienced political organizer, Gibson served as campaign manager for the Honorable Kurt L. Schmoke in three successful elections for Mayor of the City of Baltimore, in 1987, 1991 and 1995. He also managed the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign in Maryland. In recent years, he has advised the campaigns of African political leaders including Marc Ravalomanana, president of Madagascar, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia.

During the administration of President Jimmy Carter, Gibson served as associate deputy attorney general of the United States. In that role, he was vice chairman of the National Security Council Working Group on Terrorism, which coordinated the counter-terrorism efforts of numerous federal agencies, and director of the National Economic Crimes Project at the U.S. Department of Justice. He planned and coordinated various matters relating to the activities of the Justice Department, including investigations, corrections, law enforcement assistance and intergovernmental relations.

From 1973 to 1977, he was a faculty member of the American Academy of Judicial Education. In the 1980s, Gibson served as reporter to the Maryland Court of Appeals Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure and played a major role in the reorganization of the Maryland Rules of Procedure. He also served for 10 years on the National Board of Law Examiners committee responsible for developing the evidence section of the Multi-State Bar Examination. Since 1990, he has been a member of the American Law Institute, which drafts Restatements of the Law.

A member of the Monumental City Bar Association, Gibson also serves on the Columbia University Law School Board of Visitors. He founded the Baltimore-Gbarnga, Liberia, Sister-City relationship in 1973 and participated in the First Liberian Judicial Conference. He was a member of the U.S. Delegation to the European Preparatory Meeting for the Fifth United Nations Conference on Crimes and the Treatment of Prisoners in Bonn, Germany, in 1977, and co-chaired the Baltimore Bicentennial Celebration in 1997.

He earned his Bachelor of Arts from Howard University in 1964 and his Bachelor of Laws from Columbia University in 1967, where he was named to the Dean’s List. Gibson is listed in Best Lawyers in America for Civil Rights Law and received the Leadership in Law Award from The Daily Record in 2004.